


Wild Hunt

by maggiedragon



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Past Character Death, Past Theseus x Leta, Past Thesival, Poor Life Choices, Post-Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the wild hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2019-10-27 06:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17761955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggiedragon/pseuds/maggiedragon
Summary: They wouldn’t find any trace. Theseus could feel it in his bones, in the metallic taste of the magic-ruined brandy. Gellert Grindelwald had killed Percival and Leta and now he was gone.  He had an Obscurus now, and maybe the Elder Wand if the rumors were to be believed. Gellert Grindelwald was winning and Albus Dumbledore stayed in Hogwarts, dispensed platitudes, and hid behind euphemisms that Theseus was far too much of a molly not to understand.More than brothers. Lovers, he meant, but Albus Dumbledore’s lover lived and both of Theseus’ were dead.Or, the one where Theseus' grief leads to risk something terrible, but he has more left to lose than he thought.





	1. March 25th, 1927: Paris, France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They wouldn’t find any trace. Theseus could feel it in his bones, in the metallic taste of the magic-ruined brandy. Gellert Grindelwald had killed Percival and Leta and now he was gone. He had an Obscurus now, and maybe the Elder Wand if the rumors were to be believed. Gellert Grindelwald was winning and Albus Dumbledore stayed in Hogwarts, dispensed platitudes, and hid behind euphemisms that Theseus was far too much of a molly not to understand. 
> 
> _More than brothers_. Lovers, he meant, but Albus Dumbledore’s lover lived and both of Theseus’ were dead. 
> 
> Or, the one where Theseus' grief leads to risk something terrible, but he has more left to lose than he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is complete (3/3 chapters) and will post on a weekly schedule.

Theseus was drunk. He had been drinking since—

Since Paris. Since Père Lachaise, when the Fiendfyre dragon had finally crashed Dispelled to the ground. Somewhere in his head, _Senior Auror Scamander_ had known needed to move, to get Trackers into the amphitheater to see if there was any vestiges of Grindelwald’s apparition, if he could be followed. He had the Obscurial. 

He had been drinking since Yusef Kama had put a flask in his hand.

“…there was no love between us,” the man had said. “But she was brave, at the end.”

“She shouldn’t have been here,” and was that his own voice, strangled and ash-stained? “She shouldn’t have been here. She was a civilian; she shouldn’t have—it wasn’t like with Per—”

“Theseus,” Newt had said.

_Respect the dead and their wishes._

So he’d drowned the name on his lips with a long draw on his flask, drowned the little boy screaming _Leta, Leta, Leta!_ with another one.

“Thank you,” Theseus had said. The Senior Auror in him remembered that Yusef could be an important ally. “She was brave. Your mother’s blood, no doubt.”

Yusef had offered him a thin, tired smile. All of them were worn, in shock.

“Keep the flask,” he’d said.

He’d been drinking as he called out the Trackers, and they dogged Grindelwald’s steps from Paris to Toulouse, from Toulouse to Barcelona, from Barcelona to a godforsaken village in the Pyrenees, from there to Bordeaux, and on the banks of the Garonne, his Trackers told him they’d lost the man’s trail and he finished the liquor in Kama’s elegant brass-finished flask.

Streetlights shone quietly on the black water of the river. Theseus closed his eyes.

“ _Geminio,_ ” he murmured and let his magic feel for the traces of brandy in the bottle, coaxing it to Duplicate again, again, again until it felt reassuringly full in his hand. It was going to taste terrible; Theseus knew that. Although Yusef’s brandy had been excellent, of a price and quality that befit the last scion of a pureblood house, the Duplication would turn it into a poor shadow of itself.

It didn’t matter. Besides, Theseus had never had any palate for alcohol. As a soldier, he’d drank salvaged red wine in the trenches, watching his breath frost in the air and the tin cup tremble in his hands. As an Auror cadet, he’d nursed warm beer in London pubs, counting out Knuts to stay up talking until the sun rose. 

Leta had been the one to pour them glasses of straw-colored champagne and chide him to _actually taste it, love._ She’d been beautiful when she laughed and if playing the lanky buffoon from Sussex made her dark eyes light up, then Theseus would do it with pleasure. 

“I _am_ tasting it,” he’d promised.

“And…?”

“And it...has more bubbles than beer?”

“Theseus, you arrant---” and Theseus had kissed the fizz and citrus off her lips.

Leta had loved champagne and the bone-dry Sancerres of her ancestral home. Percival--- Percival had drank brandy, vanilla-sweet and spiced, warm against Massachusetts winters, complicated and slow burning like the man himself. Theseus had grown to drink both with relish, but now as his Trackers paced the river banks and tried every charm they knew to pick up the trail again, he thanked Magic he’d never lost the ability to stomach the rankest of spirits. Merlin, he had loved them. Leta and Percival both. It had been impossible not to. Dark-eyed, dark-haired, beautiful people with the world on their shoulders and the deepest of hurts in their past. How could Theseus have done anything more than step into their wounds and promise _I’m here; I’m here; I’m here_? 

Of course he hadn’t been. He hadn’t been there for Percival, who had died alone and Imperiused, without even his own identity as a comfort. They hadn’t even found his body; they’d torn the information from Grindelwald’s mind. And well. Being there this time had been cold consolation. When Leta had--- 

When Leta had—

He’d been useless.

“Theseus.” Newt had broken away from the Trackers and come back to him. “Tell me you didn’t just refill that.” 

“I didn’t just refill that,” Theseus told him automatically, but his mind was still elsewhere. 

He’d been _useless_. War hero, dragon killer, Senior Auror Theseus Taliesin Felix Scamander with his Order of Merlin and his Cross of Conspicuous Gallantry, with his path blocked by Fiendfyre and hands tied by politics. He had been useless and Leta had--

“He killed her in front of me,” he said. He vaguely realized he’d interrupted his brother uncomfortably filling the silence with a discussion of Farfadet habitats and the unspoken pacts they formed with local winegrowers. “He’s done it twice now. Taken--- taken--” 

“Taken someone who mattered,” Newt supplied quietly and Theseus saw his brother’s eyes were as red from weeping as his own. 

Someone who mattered-- the statement was as vague a euphemism as Albus Dumbledore’s _more than brothers_ had been. Percival hadn’t wanted it known. Newt had known about them, of course-- how could Theseus hide planning a proposal from the brother he was sharing a room with? And Theseus had told Leta. The weight of hiding something so important, so much a part of him would have doomed them otherwise. So he’d told her and she had run her fingers along his jaw with that small sad smile of hers and said _you mean to tell me, love, that your greatest secret is that your heart’s bigger than I knew? How beautiful._

But Percival hadn’t wanted it known and there were Trackers in earshot. And Theseus respected the dead and their wishes. It was all he could do, after all. Percival had died alone and Imperiused and Leta had died in front of him and now Theseus stood on the banks of the Garonne with his useless wand and his useless Trackers and _respected the dead_. 

They wouldn’t find any trace of the fascist here. Theseus could feel it in his bones, in the metallic taste of the magic-ruined brandy. Gellert Grindelwald had killed Percival and Leta and now he was gone. He had an Obscurus now and maybe the Elder Wand if the rumors were to be believed. Gellert Grindelwald was winning and Albus Dumbledore stayed in Hogwarts, dispensed platitudes, and hid behind euphemisms that Theseus was far too much of a molly not to understand. 

_More than brothers_. Lovers, he meant, but Albus Dumbledore’s lover lived and both of Theseus’ were dead. 

“Theseus!” 

The flask was half-empty again, and Newt’s eyes were wide. 

“Theseus. Let’s go home,” Newt said. “Come back to my place. I’ll make a cuppa and you can pet one of the Mooncalves. I know you always liked them; they make the-- how did you say it-- ‘those sodding weird coos.’ Please. You know they’ll Floo you if they find anything.”

“They won’t,” Theseus said. The certainty, the rage of it had settled in his stomach. They would be no trace of Grindelwald to find; there would be no trace of Leta to bury. “They won’t. And we won’t stop him.” 

They wouldn’t stop him and that smirking blond fascist would do this again. And again while Theseus’ Aurors bled and died, while his family and his lovers bled and died because he couldn’t be stopped, not by man, not by magic--

Oh. 

“Theseus, Theseus, whatever you just thought of doing, don’t. Please don’t; I cared about her too; I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now, but--” 

But Theseus had already Disapparated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think or hit me up at https://maggieandthedragon.tumblr.com/


	2. October 31st, 1917: Passendale, Belgium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But Percival was dead now. Dead like Leta, slain by the same man. The sister who’d eaten poppyseed cake and blackberry jam on her wedding day had no more brothers left. Percival was gone and Leta was gone and Theseus stood alone in the dried out trenches of Passchendaele. He was a man and a mage and there was no one there to remind him he was a person. 
> 
> He let his magic loose and howled. 
> 
>  
> 
> _Careful what you call._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the exclusion of a few paragraphs at the beginning and end, this is entirely flashback. Hope that's clear!

When Theseus appeared in a swirl of black smoke, the trenches of Passchendaele felt foreign to him. Ten years ago, they’d been drenched with rain for nearly the whole six weeks Theseus had been stationed there. It had been barely above freezing at times, making the Muggle artillery slick with rime. The rain had thinned out the churned up mud and blood and shit into a knee-deep slime, which had clung to his boots, to his nostrils until he had felt slow and subhuman, dragging himself from one end of the godforsaken trenches to the other. The nights had been loud, punctuated with dull red flares fired into the sky, crackling and illuminating No-Man’s-Land in chiaroscuro flashes, just in case someone was trying to crawl across.

Now it was dark and still. Dry. Theseus’ brogues thudded dully onto packed earth and he conjured up a _Lumos_ without fear of being seen by those around him. He found his fingers aching for a cigarette, even though he hadn’t smoked in years. 

He’d been in the trenches on Samhain, 1917. The rains had let up ever so slightly--or rather, it had slowed to a brutally cold mist, enough that they had to huddle close around the matches to light their cigarettes. One soldier, two, and no more. No one wanted to be the third man on the match, to risk the possibility of a sniper on the other side having had a chance to zero in on the flickering light. 

Mages like Theseus and Percival were at their most useful when the Bosch didn’t know they were there. Unopposed, a skilled wizard could drape themselves in a Notice-Me-Not, in _Muffliatio_ , and creep across No-Man’s-Land to slit throats, eavesdrop, disable the big guns that would chew through men. On a broom, they could touch softly down behind unwarded enemy lines and use Legilimency to pull battle plans out of Muggle officers.

Properly warned of a magical enemy, though, even the most useless witch or wizard could lay down rudimentary alarm systems across battlefields, ward their headquarters, and bribe Night Pixies with fresh cream and newly polished Sickles to watch over the skies. What that meant, then, was a lot of pretending to be as non-magical as possible until it was time to sortie. A Muggle uniform, a Muggle rank, shivering in Muggle trenches and fumbling to light a cigarette, no matter how easy _Tepeo_ and _Incendio_ might have made it otherwise. 

Not that Theseus would have risked an _Incendio_ anyway. Doing magic on Samhain was risky. It had a tendency to go feral, to boil over into violence and instinct. Given where they were--in the trenches with the lingering knowledge that an enemy was waiting, was watching-- matches worked just as well. 

“You're fucking on edge,” Tommy Callahan, their Muggle handler, said as he bent his head to Theseus’ match, cupping his hands around the flame to shield it from the wind. 

“It’s Samhain--- _fuck_. Halloween,” Theseus shook out the match quickly and then stifled a curse, suddenly tasting adrenaline as a bullet thudded into the trench wall nearby. 

“--and?” Tommy said. 

Of course. Tommy was a Muggle. He was their handler and thus authorized to know things previously protected by the Statute, but he wasn’t wizarding. He wouldn’t know. Theseus leaned back against the wall of the trench and felt the wood board underneath his head squish deeper into the wet earth. He pitched his voice lower. 

“Veil between the living and the dead, mortal and fae gets thin. Magic gets weird.” Theseus exhaled long and low, watching smoke plume into the wet air. 

“You’re taking the piss. Bogeymen and the dead?” 

“Dead aren’t the bogeymen,” Theseus said. “There’s a ghost who teaches history at our school. Died in his office, got up to teach the next day and didn’t realize his body hadn’t come with him.” 

Tommy snorted, all professional Manchester swagger. “Right then. So if they ain’t the bogeyman, what is?” 

“The Wild Hunt.” Even saying it now sent a shiver down Theseus’ spine, old childhood tales ringing in his ears. _‘Careful what you call,’ his father said, leaning close before howling like one of the hounds and making Theseus and Newt shriek with delight and terror._

“Lord of the Wilds rides with his hounds to collect the souls of those who die by violence. Or who give themselves over to it.” Theseus gestured behind them towards No-Man’s-Land with the red ember of his cigarette. “Given the circumstance…” 

“Shite. But you called it a bogeyman,” Tommy said. “Ain’t real, right?” 

“I don’t think so,” Theseus conceded. “But you never know with magic.” 

_”Shite,”_ Tommy exhaled expressively. 

Theseus echoed the statement with a bitter half-laugh. “Shite.” 

The sky had cleared briefly by the time Theseus made his way back to the small alcove where he’d been quartered with Percival. His _attache_ , the lie they told Muggle forces to justify Theseus keeping Graves at his side. 

“Evening,” Theseus said, ducking his head to avoid hitting it on the low, makeshift lintel. 

“How does it look out there?” Graves asked, glancing up from the camp desk where he’d been compiling field reports. The flickering orange light of the lamp caught along his jaw and Theseus knew from experience that if he pulled Percival onto the rickety bed, he’d taste like ink and kerosene. 

“Quiet. They’ve got a sharpshooter though.” 

“Lovely.” Graves set the pen down. “Done your patrol?” 

“Mmm.” Theseus nodded and leaned on the edge of the bed. “Shall we risk a ward tonight?” 

Mixed in with Muggle troops like this, they hid behind lies, behind magic. Captain Scamander and his eccentricities, the American attache who dogged him like a shadow. _Cave Inimicum_ and a Notice-Me-Not laid into the alcove when they dared to share a bed. 

“Not tonight.” Graves shook his head and offered an apologetic half-smile. “You can feel it too right?” 

“Samhain,” Theseus acknowledged. It didn’t stop him leaning over to kiss him. Ink and kerosene, salt sweat and skin. He couldn’t help but sink his teeth into Graves’ lower lip when they pulled apart. Just a little. 

“Minx,” Graves accused and his baritone voice was fond. 

“How else do I make sure you have sweet dreams?” Theseus answered and sat down on his own bed to unlace his boots. The grumble and quirked half-smile from Graves had Theseus smirking until he fell asleep. 

_Copper tang of blood, metal adrenaline, Sean Crispin caught on caught on the wire and screaming for his mother._

“Theseus.” A hand was shaking him and he started awake. “Theseus. Do you hear that?” 

Screaming. Screaming like the souls of the damned, like Crispin with his guts spilling out, terror and pain and lust and--- _’Careful what you call.’_

“Hounds,” Theseus heard his own voice say and a cold void formed in his stomach. 

Fear made him rush out into the trench with his boots unlaced, but it didn’t stop bile from rising in his throat as he sank down into the slime and felt it rush into the gaps and soak into his socks. It didn’t stop metallic adrenaline from flooding into his mouth, heart pounding with wild excitement, with the unholy kind of thrill that no one ever dared to admit craving. 

It didn’t stop his cock from rising to a full salute so hard it scraped raw against his shirttails and trousers. 

What? 

Of course. Theseus understood in a moment of delirious clarity, heart pounding to flee, fists clenched tight to fight, cock aching to fuck. The Hunter was feral, all instinct and no reason. It made sense, but no children’s tale was going to mention that it was _every_ base instinct at once. 

The trench had erupted into chaos and Theseus could hear it echoed across No-Man’s-Land, the shouting foreign but still comprehensible by tone alone. _Sehen sie das?_ and _Nicht schießen. Komm jetzt zurück._ Panicked soldiers, torn between fight and flight. Officers struggling to retain control. 

They’d be disorganized; they’d be weak. A howl of triumph started in Theseus’ spine, the instincts coalescing into one, magic rising wild and hot to his fingertips, the kinds of curses that would rip and tear and spray hot blood into the wet air of Passchendaele. Victory for his pack, for his mate who wanted vengeance, for-- 

_“They torpedoed the ship and he drowned. Too far out to Disapparate. Can you imagine trying to make that choice? Drown intact or Splinch yourself to pieces trying to survive?”_

Percival and his lost little brother and the wounds so old and so deep that all Theseus had wanted to do was climb into his lap, shine big enough and bright enough to fill that darkness. _I’m here, I’m here, I’m here._ No vengeance would pull Cador Graves out of the deep darkness of the Atlantic, but the memory of Percival’s loss made the world clear. 

Theseus’ vision steadied even as his cock still ached. His mouth filled with vomit and he dropped to his knees in the filth and the mud and retched until he was nothing but a cold shivering mass of exhaustion and horror. Madness reigned around him; he glanced up to see Tommy down in the mud with Edwin on top of him, the pose impossible to attribute clearly to lust or violence until he caught the rictus of fury carved on the other man’s face. 

He was a man, a mage, a _person_. They weren’t his pack, but they were his responsibility. The world spun when Theseus stood, but he staggered over, pulled them off each other. 

“That’s the Hunt, you blighter! Snap out of it!” 

Theseus’ vision reeled. He went up and down the trenches. His voice went hoarse from yelling. At some point, he could hear the enemy yelling. No, the Germans because if he let the idea of _enemy_ in, he’d give himself over to the Hunt. They were yelling as well, fighting to keep their men under control. To keep them human. He picked up the call, echoing in English what they had to be shouting in German. For his own men. For the men on the other side. _Don’t shoot. Stay down. Stay human._

The pressure in his head increased. He stayed away from Graves. Lust still crawled low in his belly; the desperate need to protect and to heal would be so easily perverted to vengeance and violence if he let himself near his lover. 

He couldn’t hear anything but howling, immense and overwhelming. He’d failed. His squad would hurl themselves into No-Man’s-Land and be annihilated, their blood in the mud and their souls torn up in the teeth of the faery Hounds. He should run; give them up and save himself, run like the prey that he was and maybe, maybe--- 

The Hunt had gone. 

The Hunt had gone. Theseus was himself again. 

He found Percival again, mud-soaked and pale and he pressed himself into the other man’s chest in a way that would have been _dangerous_ if the rest of the world wasn’t bleeding and scared the same way. The American understood too, dropped an arm around him and told him stories of New York, domestic little tales, the way his flat had leaked when he was an Auror cadet, the cake they’d served at his sister’s wedding, sneaking gin-soaked into Times Square to watch the Muggles drop their glowing metal ball on New Year’s Eve. 

But Percival was dead now. Dead like Leta, slain by the same man. The sister who’d eaten poppyseed cake and blackberry jam on her wedding day had no more brothers left. Percival was gone and Leta was gone and Theseus stood alone in the dried out trenches of Passchendaele. He was a man and a mage and there was no one there to remind him he was a person. 

He let his magic loose and howled. 

_Careful what you call._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think in the comments or come say hi at https://maggieandthedragon.tumblr.com/


	3. March 25th, 1927, Passendale, Belgium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theseus' heartbeat faded away under a rush of summer wind. Instead of the nibbling blackness of blood loss, all his senses sharpened. His blood showed up bright on the ground next to him, even as the heat of it faded near the edges. He could hear small scampering creatures a hundred feet away as they tunneled through the ground and buried secret treasures against the oncoming winter. He could smell distant factories burning low through the night, the ash carried miles on the wind. His magic went wild; power rioted through his veins, copper heat and fire. The sensation was too overwhelming to be joy, too pleasurable to be adrenaline. He could tear down the world like this, bend the white hot heat of the sun to his will, fly like no wizard had ever done before. 
> 
> He could put his teeth into Gellert Grindelwald’s throat and bite and rip and tear until his quarry stopped moving and the red blood went cold. 
> 
> **Show your fealty** rumbled the depths of the wood, the storm itself, the Lord of the Hunt wearing the face of some woman with one eye as green as deep forest shadow, the other red as drying blood. 
> 
> [Or: Theseus makes two choices]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: gore, reference to rape

Theseus threw back his head and howled. 

Like a dog. Like the damned soul he felt like. Leta was dead, Percival not even a year before, and Theseus so cheated he couldn’t even claim the faint mercy of _“widower”_. 

He’d wanted so much with Leta. The blue silk negligee he’d glimpsed peeking out of a Selfridge’s bag. The crate of Moet et Chandon that he’d squirreled away for anniversaries to come and the way she rolled her eyes when he’d tease and call her _“Mrs. Scamander”_. The hesitance in her voice when--Magic, only a week ago-- she’d leaned against him in a Ministry elevator. 

“The only good mythological name for a girl and your parents gave it to Newt,” she’d said and he’d seen the caution in her dark eyes, the old hurt-- _would you trust me with a child?_ \-- veiled but still visible. “What are we supposed to name a daughter?” 

“Minerva?” Theseus had suggested without pause and been gratified to see the fear slip away. 

“Minerva Scamander sounds horrendous, love.” She’d rolled her eyes and stood on her toes to kiss the corner of his mouth. Don’t be ridiculous.” 

_Diana_ , he’d wanted to tell her later. _Diana Scamander. Roman instead of Greek, but still a nod to Newt. You two were best friends. He’d like that._

He’d wanted years and years and years, and Magic, he wouldn’t even get to bury her. 

Theseus had gone hoarse screaming when his magic took over. It ripped wild and wordless out of him like he was still a child, without wand or words to trammel and restrain the impossible force that lived in his chest and his veins. 

When he could breathe again,he wasn’t alone. 

Reptilian fear crawled down his spine even as he felt blood pumping into his cock, the reaction visceral and instinctual despite his grief. Despite _Leta._ It made him feel sick. 

**We remember you.**

The voice was immense. Like brass bells, like artillery; it drove Theseus to his knees. His hands scraped on the rough, dry ground of the bottom of the trench and his mind reeled at the sight of the dust. 

There was no mud. 

There had always been mud in the war. The blood and the vomit and the shit and the piss, it leaked down into the ground and their footsteps churned it up into a filthy slime you would never been rid of. 

**We remember you.** boomed the voice again. **Child playing with fire and thinking he wouldn’t get burned.**

“Well, I have always been an idiot.” Theseus’ mouth was dry even as his breath came in whimpers. Fear or lust or some deranged combination of the two. His nose filled with the scent-- animal musk, richer and denser than anything he’d ever experienced in Newt’s case, the rust scent of old blood, and the kind of warm summer wind that made you feel you could fly. 

**Cubs always are.** The statement was neither benediction nor exculpation, but simple fact. **And now you are grown and come howling for us. Perhaps little has changed.**

A thread of curiosity, the faintest hint of reprief, whispered underneath the storm clouds of that voice. A panther with its belly full debated whether to play with its prey or simply dispatch it. 

Theseus would speak now or lose his chance forever. He pushed himself upright. His knees felt like water; a pulse beat _run, run, run_ in his throat even as his cock rasped against fabric and made him shudder. 

Percival stood across from him. 

Except it wasn’t Percival as Theseus had seen him last, so worn under the alert intelligence, the brown eyes low embers, and the streaks of grey reaching further back year after year. Instead, the hair was all black and tousled, the face marked with loss instead of care, the dull beige uniform instead of the posh black coat with the white satin slashed into the cuffs.

Except it wasn’t Percival at all. His eyes were _wrong_ and Theseus didn’t have a chance to process exactly how before he lunged. The violence of the Hunt had barely been restrained before, but now it had a target. His magic flared up burnt copper and lightning, Auror and soldier training shaping it into sharp, twisting angles that could shatter through a Shield Charm and--

A flash of white. Sharp teeth. Yellow eyes. Dragon. Wolf? Theseus couldn’t tell before his wand arm exploded in pain, sending him into the ground in choking agony in front of the forgery of the man he had loved. 

**Still a foolhardy whelp, we see. But powerful to match.**

“Don’t you dare,” Theseus gritted out. “Don’t you dare. He’s had enough of that.”

(Even now, he couldn’t manage the past tense without pain.)

Oh Merlin, his _arm_. Searing pain covered over something else, a sensation-- or lack thereof-- that was even more horrific, but he wouldn’t look. He wouldn’t yield to injured-animal fear in front of this--

In front of the Hunter.

A flicker of exasperation sighed through the summer wind and then Leta stood over him and her eyes, too, they were strange.

**Speak before your blood runs out**. 

His blood? Only now did Theseus dare look at his arm as the fear and rage subsided. Bile rose in his throat. His wand was gone. 

His arm was gone. 

From the elbow down, there was only the white jagged shard of a bone. Twitching red meat laced with yellow fat lay exposed to the air. Blood soaked into the dry soil like the trench remembered the charnel house it used to be. Theseus’ vision blackened around the edges; curling panic made want to him push away, but the useless muscle simply twitched, splintered bone stump moving obscenely in the open air. 

**Speak. We are not patient.**

What had he expected? That he could call upon the Fae without paying a cost? 

Theseus swallowed past the pale dizziness that threatened to overwhelm as he pushed himself up into a sitting to sit at least, clinging to some pretense of dignity even as he slowly bled out in a trench at Passchendale. Even as he begged a favor from a _thing_ of violence and fear that was wearing his fiance’s face. 

“Gellert Grindelwald.”

**You would dictate our prey.**

“If that’s how you would have it. Or lend me your strength and I’ll do it myself.” Lend me your _arm,_ more like, and Theseus could tell how badly he was bleeding from the sudden urge to burst into laughter. 

**We do not trade in favors.**

“But you’ll trade for one.” Theseus could hear his own heartbeat loud in his ears. He was going to die for even having asked. No point in diplomacy. “What’s your price, Lord of the Hunt?” 

**You cannot hunt one quarry alone. You hunt or you do not.**

“What does that mean?”

Then Theseus felt it. His own heartbeat faded away under a rush of summer wind. Instead of the nibbling blackness of blood loss, all his senses sharpened. His blood showed up bright on the ground next to him, even as the heat of it faded near the edges. He could hear small scampering creatures a hundred feet away as they tunneled through the ground and buried secret treasures against the oncoming winter. He could smell distant factories burning low through the night, the ash carried miles on the wind. His magic went wild; power rioted through his veins, copper heat and fire. The sensation was too overwhelming to be joy, too pleasurable to be adrenaline. He could tear down the world like this, bend the white hot heat of the sun to his will, fly like no wizard had ever done before. 

He could put his teeth into Gellert Grindelwald’s throat and bite and rip and tear until his quarry stopped moving and the red blood went cold. 

**Show your fealty** rumbled the depths of the wood, the storm itself, the Lord of the Hunt wearing the face of some woman with one eye as green as deep forest shadow, the other red as drying blood. 

Wait. 

_Leta_. 

Leta’s eyes were wrong. They had never been brilliant green, never umber red. They’d been dark, cautious at times, sharp and laughing at others. They had been dark and warm and intelligent. Like Percival’s had been. How could Theseus not have loved them both? Dark eyes and dark hair with their hurts and their burdens and all he had wanted to do was promise _I’m here, I’m here, I’m here._

**Show your fealty** screeched the hawk on high, searching for prey. 

Three glittering objects rested in Theseus’ palm. 

The first was a dragonbone ring-- the one Percival had refused-- forged from the body of the Ukrainian Ironbelly that had nearly claimed Theseus’ life. The Army had given him the horns and Theseus had had no idea what to do with the morbid prize until the December night they’d spent getting drunk in the bombed out ruins of a French _brasserie_ and Theseus had realized all he ever wanted was Percival. Dragonbone for his soldier lover because _“that’s what marriage is, right, Dad? Having each other’s back”_ and Percival had refused to leave the field until scouts had found Theseus half-conscious and scorched underneath the beast’s heavy skull. 

The second was his mother’s _toi-et-moi_ engagement ring, with the platinum setting and the yellow gold band. 

Theseus had wanted to do right by Leta-- a formal proposal, his mother’s ring, an announcement in the newspaper. She deserved all of it-- everything she’d ever even idly wanted and then some. He’d wanted to ask her father’s permission too, and he’d had some deluded and self-important idea that he could mend things somehow. He’d been baffled at Leta’s insistence that her father hated her, that she hated him. Even with what she’d told him about Corvus, her father had to have known it was a mistake, a terrible accident. And while Theseus wasn’t pureblooded by any means, his family was an old one. He was highly placed at the Ministry; the dress uniform he never wore had the silver star of the Order of Merlin on its breast. 

Except when he’d brought up visiting her father, Leta had refused. 

“I’m never going back there, Theseus,” she’s said. “I won’t.” 

“I know he resented what happened to Corvus, but he’s your father. He must--”

“He raped my mother!” 

And Theseus had stood silenced as if by artillery fire while the story poured out of her.

“And I’m sure you don’t understand what it was like with your _perfect family_ and your little brother who adores you and your family ranch in Sussex--”

“I don’t,” Theseus had admitted. What else could he say? He had been through his own kind of Hell, a war whose purpose he still didn’t understand, but it had been honest in a way. He’d known the Germans were trying to kill him. They hadn’t been family; he hadn’t expected them to love and cherish him and each other. “I can’t imagine, Leta, but I don’t need to. You don’t want to go back; we won’t. I won’t ever ask again.” 

Leta had snorted and turned away. “Can’t believe you’re surprised. I’m the girl with no family, after all. Always--” 

“I’ll be your family.” The words had torn out of him. 

He hadn’t planned on doing it this way. Magic, could you pick a worse time to propose than when the woman you wanted to marry was red-eyed and shouting? He’d wanted reservations at Kettner’s, a bottle of Perrier Jouet tucked into a Space-Charmed pocket, at least having _planned what he was saying_ but Leta’s scars were open and bleeding and what else could we do but go down on one knee and fish around in his pocket for the ring? 

And yet she had said yes. Said yes and taken the ring and worn it and Theseus had loved seeing on her finger until Grindelwald had burnt it to pieces along with the woman he wanted to marry. But now it sat intact on his palm alongside the ring he had wanted to give to Percival and--- something else that Theseus didn’t recognize until he pressed on it with his thumb and the dial whirred out of concealment: MUGGLEWORTHY. 

“Merlin, Newt, there’s a Statute of Secrecy for a reason!”

“I know that, but that reason certainly isn’t Occamies,” Newt had answered. The mulish tone to his voice was belied by his eyes going down and to the side, the fatal tell that confrontation was already running his nerves raw. “You can’t expect me to leave them in London.” 

“No, but--” That would have been even worse, honestly, and Theseus pushed a hand through his hair, turning away as he paced the tiny Vauxhall walk-up they had shared after the war. 

“Help me find a place for them, Theseus, please,” Newt said and, Merlin, it wasn’t like Theseus could have refused his brother anything. 

(Even if sometimes he asked the impossible. Even if sometimes he rejected the _Newt-this-is-the-best-I-can-do_ compromises as if they were insults. Even if.)

“Make a space,” he’d finally said. “I’m not good with creatures, not like you. But if you can make a space, I can make it secret.”

Two weeks later, when Newt had showed him the suitcase, Theseus had given him the lock. 

 

**Show your fealty,** said the Hunter and Theseus came back to the trench and the pain and his wand arm nothing but bone shards and blood. 

“You want me to give you these,” he said vaguely. His head was spinning from blood loss. 

**Yes.**

“No other loyalties but to you.” 

Theseus understood now. The stories said, after all, that to give yourself over to the Hunt was to give up everything that made you human. Why would willingly, deliberately brokering such a transaction be any different? 

**Yes. Show your fealty.**

Dragonbone. Platinum and gold. Worn brass. 

Percival supplanted and murdered while Theseus was none the wiser. Leta murdered in front of him. And Newt-- Grindelwald had looked at his little brother and asked if Dumbledore would mourn him. 

Would Newt mourn if Theseus gave up his soul?

_”Theseus. Let’s go home,”_ his brother had said and _”Theseus, Theseus, whatever you just thought of doing, don’t.”_

His brother had always been the better of the two of them. Even when his goodness made him impossible to deal with, impossible to make him _just fucking compromise for once in your life, Newt_. Newt didn’t compromise and didn’t do sides. Newt had seen even Theseus becoming an Auror with a touch of wariness-- _“These are the same people who sent us to burn the world down not that long ago, Thes. Are you sure you trust their definition of justice?”_

Theseus always loved the same people, after all. Not always dark-haired, not always dark-eyed, but always, with the world on their shoulders, however lightly they bore it. Not always a man, not always a woman, not always someone he wanted to marry, but good and loyal and unfailingly true to their principles. 

Newt would mourn him if he gave up his soul, but he wouldn’t understand. And not one of three people who he would have so easily surrendered to the Hunt would forgive him. 

“No,” Theseus said. 

**Brazen pup, to summon us with no intent to pledge,** the frost of midwinter creaked and groaned. **Deer who turn tail are chased the swiftest.**

Theseus could hear the hounds now, feel hot breath on the back of his neck. Blind terror made his heart race, his knees tremble with the desperate need to run, hide, escape--

“I am not a deer. I am not running.” Getting the words out when every part of him wanted to scream took every ounce of his will. “I am a mage and I am telling you no.” 

Theseus was alone in the silent dust of the trench. 

The rings were gone and so too was the shredded wreckage of his arm. He flexed his fingers in the dirt and shuddered to notice the texture--- viscous and soft. The earth beneath his arm and nowhere else had churned up into trench mud. 

He sat there for a long time. 

 

Newt was in the same green dressing gown he’d had since he was seventeen when he opened the door to his flat. 

“Theseus,” he said. 

Newt didn’t need to say anything more for Theseus to know how terrible he must look, covered in trench dirt and sweat, drunk and reeling, still only inches from what could have been the worst decision of his life. 

“Can I stay here tonight?” he asked. “It’s just--my flat is full of--” 

“Yes,” said Newt. 

Theseus’ flat was full of champagne squirreled away for anniversaries that would never come, letters from a man who had loved him and left him. There would be dispatches to write and a wedding to cancel and nights where baying hounds rang in his ears and he woke up aching and tasting blood at the same time. 

_Sure you want to be a mage?_

No. No, he wasn’t. The sound of the hounds and the heat of the storm would stay in his blood and his brain until the day he died, but for now--

For now, he let his brother pull him inside, promising tea and the Mooncalves, company if he wanted it, solitude if he didn’t, and closed the door against the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay! Let me know what you think in the comments or come say hi at https://maggieandthedragon.tumblr.com/


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